Fractals
by Cesia Kloudsmouth
Summary: After a truck plummeted through his body, taking his memories with it, Lavi, driven by an urge to reclaim what is lost, needs to find the missing piece before "something" goes wrong. After finding the truth, Kanda, driven by an urge to lose everything down to his life, needs a reason to keep going. After meeting, the two realize the other has what they are looking for.


**PROLOGUE**

He cannot tell if he is dead, nor can he tell if he is alive. The entire world is white, like someone scrapped a picture clean with an eraser, leaving not a smudge in its wake. No noise resonates from the blank nothingness before him, and he cannot call out to change it. His throat clogs up, filling with some bitter taste, every time he attempts to call out someone's name. His body cannot move. Everything is nothing, and at the same time, something. A forgotten memory is not entirely lost, after all—the slightest nudge can reclaim it.

No nudges. He's chained down, or rather, a _part_ of this vast whiteness, stretching from the ends of the universe to the exact point where he exists. If he exists at all.

And the world comes back, in one fell swoop, as dark clouds and tall skyscrapers and streetlights and faces greet him. Too much information, sensory overload, he needs to get away from there—wherever there is. His brain tries to calculate what happened in the last _forever_, but the gears are stuck and refuse to budge. He gasps, and someone shouts, "He's alive!"

Well, that answers one question out of a million and a half.

He struggles to sit up, head pulsing, lungs barely able to obtain the much-needed oxygen, and hands feeling like someone took nails to each joint and hammered them in. The world is dark, only illuminated by car lights and other artificial sources. He can name every single car that slows down to see what is going on—Chevy Aveo '10, Ford F-150 '05, Volkswagon Beetle '11—but cannot pin a name to the city in which he sat in a puddle, bones broken, covered in mud and blood. Nor, he realizes, can he put a name to himself. However, he can list every single brand of clothing everyone around him is wearing. Priorities. His brain seems to think these are more important than the self.

"Dude," someone says as he stands up, "how are you still moving? You got plowed by a truck at, like, ninety miles an hour!"

He flexes his fingers. They still hurt, but for whatever reason, he knows it is not the worst pain he has ever had. His left leg, unable to support his weight, gives out on him, and someone in the crowd hoists him up. He does not want these people touching him.

"The guy didn't even stop," says someone else. "I tried to get his license plate number, but the dude was _way_ too fast. I doubt he even noticed that you were in the crosswalk."

So he was going somewhere, which meant this place is familiar to this self, whoever he is. He bet his money that he lived here, too. He glances around at his wet surroundings, seeing a bag and its contents strewn out across the pavement—books, pens, computer (now thoroughly destroyed), earphones—and a torn bag of groceries. A bruised apple rests still next to the telephone pole.

"Where," he starts, but the effort to speak exhausts him quickly.

"Don't worry," says the large man helping him stand, "the ambulance will be here soon. Just try to stay awake until then, okay?"

Despite his lack of knowledge surrounding his existence, the thought of living strongly appeals to him. He needs to—there is something unfinished, a certain puzzle piece that needs to be reclaimed, an urge to solve something. He slumps against the large man as he keeps his breathing as even as possible. The white world may tempt him, but for now, he tells it as it tries to take over his consciousness, he needs to stay.

He needs to be here, wherever "here" is.

The doctors and nurses attend to his needs until he is able to leave several months later. Over the time period, he gathers basic information about himself: His name is Lavi Bookman, age 18, a promising college student who is getting his degree in English with a minor in History. None of this means anything to him, and none of it rings a bell. The important piece, the one his mind constantly thirsted for, has yet to be found. Something is wrong. Something about this "existence" is wrong.

But for now, it is enough. Lavi quickly healed, much to the astonishment of the doctors taking care of him. He left in almost perfect condition (with the exception of his right eye, which, according to the doctors, would remain forever blind) and returned to his normal life with several visits to a hospital as they tried to uncover the missing bits of his memory.

"My name is Lavi."

He stares at himself in the mirror, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth distastefully, as he glares at the image reflected. "My name is Lavi," he repeats to no one, and the words are malformed by the toothbrush. "My name is Lavi. My name is Lavi. My name is…"

He spits out the toothpaste and washes the brush before sticking it back in its holder. "Lavi," he finishes, and then sighs. No matter how many times he repeats it, nothing new comes from it. When supposedly familiar friends call out to him, nothing clicks, and nothing comes back. His entire memory is gone, and he has to accept that, someone told him once. And he did accept it, for the most part, except for that nagging piece that yearned for his attention.

"My name is Lavi. I'm eighteen years old, and a college student. I work part-time at a restaurant, and I volunteer at the public library. I do not live on campus. I live by myself in this city. I did not grow up here, but I have lived here since I started college." He starts putting clean clothes on, tugging down a basic green shirt and pulling up a pair of jeans with holes over the knees. "I like books. I love books. I love books more than people. But…"

He pauses, eye focusing on the food sitting out on the table. Oh, right, he still needs to eat. Daily tasks often evade him, and he needs constant reminders to do things from other people. Eat, they say. Shower, they say. Someday, he will get a routine down, if he rehearses it enough. Knowledge that comes from books retains forever in his head, yet the simplicity of how to stay alive slips out late at night without leaving a phone number.

After eating, he packs his backpack for the day—college texts, address of where his job is, a new laptop—and puts on his shoes. Everything has an order, and everything needs order, or else everything goes back into chaos. He cannot afford more chaos. He needs order where memory has failed him.

"My name is Lavi," he says, "but that's not what's important about me. I'm…"

He trails off as he steps onto the sidewalk, eye watching countless people meander onward in different paths to different destinations. He readjusts his bag, easing the tension off of his shoulders, before taking a step towards the college he attends.

"Empty," he finishes, and then realizes he is walking the wrong way. He stops, turns, and goes the other way.


End file.
